Single Spies and Talking Heads

There is something rather sadistic in Alan Bennett's portraits of self-delusion in "Talking Heads." In contrast, his short plays (originally teleplays) about very British Soviet spies are more open to complexity. The most interesting characters are Coral Browne as herself in "An Englishman Abroad" and the queen in "A Question of Attribution," though Burgess and Blunt are multidimensional in ways none of the talking heads are. The scene of the queen and Blunt which was played so well by Prunella Scales and Edward (or was it James?) Fox in the BBC production is brilliantly written. Bennett is, indeed, a master at writing lines that give away or seem to give away more than the character understands-or seems to understand. The audience knows best with the "artless" talking heads, but neither Blunt nor the audience can be quite sure if the queen has toyed with him or is as straightforward and concerned with concrete facts as she presents herself as being. "Who did what?" is also very much in question in the "Titians" Blunt is examining and in the puzzle of who was running the spies who were eventually revealed.